Gerry Palmers Science 07.15.2022 21:Jul PM EDT

Virgin Galactic Opens Space Plane Manufacturing Facility in Arizona

Virgin Galactic announced it will make around six spaceships a year at a manufacturing facility in the suburb of Mesa in Phoenix, Arizona.

The suborbital space tourism provider, which just last week announced a deal with Boeing subsidiary Aurora Flight Sciences to build a new set of carrier planes for its Delta spaceships, said the leased facility, will not only produce six spaceships a year but also provide hundreds of jobs in the region.

to build a new set of carrier planes for the Delta spaceships, said that the newly leased facility could not only produce up to six spaceships a year, but also bring hundreds of jobs in the area.

Spacecraft Facility Under Construction, Set For Completion in 2023

Construction is ongoing at the facility, which is located in close proximity to the Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport, and it should be complete in 2023, Virgin Galactic said in a statement. No lease terms, the lease manager or the square footage of the facility were mentioned in the statement.

The new facility is "key to accelerating the production of our Delta fleet, enabling a rapid increase in flight capacity that will drive our revenue growth," Virgin Galactic CEO Michael Colglazier said in the statement.

Virgin Galactic aims to launch around 400 suborbital space tourism missions annually with two new motherships and a new fleet of Delta space planes. These new planes are set to launch services in 2025 with "revenue payload flights," the company said previously. Sub-orbital space flights ae set to begin in 2026.

The development comes days after the first anniversary of Virgin Galactic's first fully crewed spaceflight that transpired on July 11, 2021. Founder Richard Branson flew on that mission on board Virgin Galactic's VSS Unity space plane, which was carried aloft by the VMS Eve aircraft.

Since then, however, Virgin Galactic hasn't launched a mission. The company is performing upgrade and maintenance work on Unity and Eve, which are the only operational spaceship and carrier plane, respectively, currently in Virgin Galactic's fleet.

Ticket Prices for Virgin Galactic Spaceflights

A ticket for a Virgin Galactic passenger flight currently costs $450,000, up from of $250,000 that was before Branson's flight. Virgin Galactic ticket sales briefly reopened twice to customers since July last year, and the waiting list has since stood at about 800 customers.

Unlike most space missions that launch with a straight rocket lift to space, Virgin Galactic launches its customers by means of an aircraft. This carrier aircraft hauls the space plane aloft under its wings, until they reach an altitude of about 50,000 feet (15,000 meters). The space plane then plummets free and enables an onboard rocket to reach suborbital space.

Virgin Galactic's next suborbital spaceflight is aimed at an early 2023 launch date, having been pushed back by three months due to supply and labor issues. While the VSS Unity has reached suborbital space on four test flights, the space plane has not yet started a full commercial service.